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- Gardening Mama
Gardening Mama Preview
- January 30, 2009 16:00 PM PST
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Terrific! You garden flowers even better than Mama.
After playing through an early build of Gardening Mama for the Nintendo DS, I'm curious if I could actually till the soil, shovel the fertilizer, and plant the seeds in an actual, real garden. It's something I've never done before, but Gardening Mama made it seem so easy and quite fun to do. Tilling, shoveling, digging, and watering actions are all mini-games you play and perform in Gardening Mama as you tend a personalized garden of Tulip, Pansy, Morning Glory, and Freesia flowers.
Dirty Jobs
From Gardening Mama's map overview, I chose the Tulip section to get my hands dirty first. The play style in Gardening Mama is beyond simple, requiring you to use the stylus to open bags of Tulip seeds by cutting the bag from left to right with a swiping motion. Then you sort out the good seeds by dragging and dropping them onto a tray. After that you need to till the soil with fertilizer by gently lifting and pouring out a bag of chosen fertilizer. And finally adjust the soil with a wedge-like bulb to make ample room for the seed, plant the seed, and then slowly water the dig site by tipping a jug of water until the water level indicator turns blue.
Even though all this seems simple enough, there is plenty of room for mistake and you will not get as good a rating. That's why I recommend a couple practice runs before you commit to the real deal of gardening.
Mama Ain't No Hoe
Beyond that, Gardening Mama expands into a game of keeping your garden from wilting with a whole new set of actions to perform, such as transferring your budding flowers to new soil and re-watering the drying soil. You can also decorate your garden and outfit Mama with new clothing items that you unlock from performing well in the garden. Gardening Mama is exclusive to the Nintendo DS and spawns from Cooking Mama on the Nintendo Wii. Gardening Mama comes out in spring 2009.
